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February 12, 2011

Montreal, 1977

I recently found a small box of slides that I took at my first Expos game. Fortunately, there was a date on the box: Sunday, July 31, 1977.

Dodgers - 200 000 000 6 - 8 11 2
Expos - 000 100 100 0 - 2 5 1

Now I can update my 21 Ball Parks post! ... 1977 was the first year the Expos played in the Big O, after the Summer Olympics the previous summer.

I was 13 years old and I guess I went by myself, on a Vermont Transit bus. (I have a memory of being at Olympic Stadium with my younger brother, but he would have been only five in 1977, so that game was probably in '79 or '80.)

Going to Montreal so early in my baseball fandom -- when actually being at a game was truly an amazing event; who the hell cared what they played on! -- gave me a soft spot* for domed stadiums. I don't like Skydome for many reasons, but being in the actual building with the roof closed is not one of them. The only other dome I have been in -- the Kingdome in Seattle -- resembled a huge prison complex from the outside, but walking in and seeing the green carpet brought back warm memories of Montreal.

* Or at least not a complete hatred and disgust. I would never prefer a dome & turf stadium for my team, but I don't have a visceral dislike of them. (I remember liking that the lanes for the Olympic track events were still there, by the backstop and along the walk-in dugouts.)

12 comments:

I would, but I have no way of converting colour slides to a jpgs. (I assume having that done professionally is costly.)

My supervisor is also a professional photographer and told me yesterday that he hopes to purchase a contraption that will do exactly that so I'll totally exploit that avenue (sometime in the next year). But until then ...

I also have a shitload of b&w negatives (my father was a serious photographer) that I would like to transfer.

Hard to imagine a 13 year old going by himself or herself to Montreal by bus these days. Times sure were different! You had already been to Fenway at this point, right? This was not your first ever live MLB game, IIRC.

I had been to Fenway the previous August with my father. I'm assuming this was MLB Game #2, since I think I went to only one game a year. (So maybe I did not go to Boston at all in '77.)

But this trip was fairly straight-forward. Get dropped off at bus terminal, get on bus, bus parks right near park, go to game, go back to bus, get picked up at bus terminal. Very little chance for things to go wrong. (Plus, it's Canada!)

Hard to imagine a 13 year old going by himself or herself to Montreal by bus these days.

Hey, it's done all the time, to all different places. Kids in NJ go to NYC or Philadelphia, kids in Mass go to Boston, etc etc. If anything, kids are more independent now that they all have electronic tethers (cell phones).

I certainly went to NYC by myself to meet camp friends when I was that age, but those were different times, as I said. Plus I was meeting friends at the other end, and I was not crossing state, let alone national, borders!

I cannot remember either of my kids getting on a bus alone at 13 to go to Boston or NYC unless a parent or friend was meeting them at the other end.

I am assuming I went alone, because I have no recollection of going to an Expos game with either of my parents.

MOCK: Somewhere (BB Primer or Prospectus, maybe, but it was years ago) there was an article on how Montreal really lost the Expos. The common story that people simply stopped supporting the them is not accurate. The Expos story is more like the owner who deliberately lets his stadium fall to shit, then explains that he has to move or get a new taxpayer park because the old one fell to shit.

In 1969, the Expos' first season, they played 12 extra-inning games -- and they lost all 12, being outscored 18-0. That article states that they are the only team since 1901 to not win even one extra-inning game in a season.